My thoughts on tech, stuff, and nonsense.

Gremlin : A new little robot

I started working on a new little robot called Gremlin. It is based on a Parallax Boe-Bot base with an Erector set and plexiglass frame. For electronics it has a Raspberry Pi w/ WiFi adapter, 16-channel I²C Servo controller and the Raspberry Pi Camera Module. Power comes from 10 AA batteries (4 for servo controller and 6 for Raspberry Pi), but I will likely upgrade to LiPos. Here’s a short video showing the Android control app (sorry for the crummy production quality):

It’s currently missing the 6 AA batteries for the Raspberry Pi (I’m waiting on a few parts), so the tether is just there to power the Pi.

The Android app is a little something I wrote which connects to the robot over the network (WiFi). It has a live video stream and virtual joystick controls. Once I get the whole mobile power assembly hooked up I’ll be able to use it for telepresence.

With my primary robotics project, the Drogon Quadcopter, grounded for the winter, I’ve started Gremlin to keep some of the work going The goal is really to have a smaller, easier to work with mobile robot for building a general purpose robotics software platform for Drogon and any other robotic projects I pursue. Also I’d like to use it as a test-bed for building learning algorithms and working with the camera, also applicable to Drogon.